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Vaughn Palmer: 20 years later, New Water Act trickles down to current provincial administration

Food giant Nestlé, which draws large amounts of water for free near Hope, would be one of the companies affected by proposed groundwater legislation announced Friday by Environment Minister Mary Polak. But Green MLA Andrew Weaver calculated the proposed fee schedule would only cost Nestlé 85 cents per 2 million bottles.

Photograph by: CHRIS RANK
, BLOOMBERG NEWS

VICTORIA — On a summer day in 1993, B.C. Environment Minister John Cashore staged a press conference alongside Okanagan Lake in Penticton to launch what was, even then, a long-overdue rewrite of the antiquated Water Act.

“Our current Act, which is more than 100 years old, is simply inadequate to deal with any appropriate new vision with regard to water,” Cashore told reporters as ministry staff distributed eight discussion papers on water issues.

He went on to note how the existing legislation had its roots in the 19th century, when the government first began regulating access to surface water as a proprietary right for miners, farmers and clusters of settlers.

The province had tinkered with the legislation in the interim, but in one dramatic respect, it lagged well behind the country. For as Cashore underscored, B.C. was the only Canadian jurisdiction with no legislation to protect groundwater and aquifers.

Still, having rung the alarm bells on the need to modernize the Water Act, Cashore indicated that the process would be a deliberative one, involving a review, consultations and multiple legislative drafts.

“We’re taking political leadership and dealing with this one step at a time,” the New Democratic Party minister declared. “I don’t think any good decisions are made in a panic.”

No panic. Cashore proved to be prophetic on that score, not just for his tenure as environment minister but on behalf of multiple successors at the cabinet table.

Twenty years and several administrations later, current environment minister Mary Polak staged a briefing in the legislature press theatre Friday to take the wraps off a 100-page proposed modernization of — you guessed it — the Water Act.

“The new (legislation) will update and replace the existing Act, which we know is well over 100 years old,” the B.C. Liberal minister told reporters, in an almost word-for-word echo of her NDP predecessor.

The interim had seen some tougher protection for drinking water and tinkering here and there on other water protection measures.

But as in the 1993 briefing, reporters were told that B.C. was still the only province in Canada that does not have some form of legislation to protect groundwater.

“Unlike surface water, under current laws, groundwater can be used without government authorization and no annual fees apply, even to large-scale users,” said the accompanying documentation. “This is widely seen as unfair.”

Polak and her staff went on to outline a re-named Water Sustainability Act that would bring the regulatory treatment of groundwater in line with that of surface water. It would also improve protection for surface water, encourage conservation, and require comprehensive reporting on large-scale water use in the province.

Climate change also figures much more prominently in today’s thinking about the need for water protection: “While there have always been dry spells, the impacts of climate change are expected to result in more frequent and longer droughts in the years ahead.”

The current proposal is the product of a review and consultation process launched in 2009 by then-environment minister Barry Penner in the then-administration of Premier Gordon Campbell (remember them?)

Not apparent in Friday’s briefing was any explanation for why this worthy exercise had taken so long to come to fruition.

Yes, water use is potentially fraught with controversy. But the government is proposing to exclude from the new groundwater regulatory regime the two uses whose inclusion would likely have generated the most backlash.

Domestic wells won’t be subject to the proposed fees, licensing and reporting provisions.

Nor is the government proposing to use this legislation to go after the natural gas industry’s practice of tapping deep (600 metres below surface and greater) saline water deposits as part of the process known as fracking. Those sources being neither readily accessible nor potable; moreover, fracking is covered by other provincial legislation.

Once those two uses are excluded, the government will be levying about $5 million in annual licensing fees on mainly industrial uses of groundwater. Moreover, as Polak disclosed, it may well cost the ministry more than that to licence, inspect and otherwise administer the new groundwater regulatory regime.

Hardly worth the trouble? One was left thinking that after Andrew Weaver, the Green MLA, offered reporters his calculation that the minuscule fee schedule would amount to charges of 85 cents per 2 million bottles for a large-scale bottler of groundwater like Nestlé Canada, operator of a plant in Hope.

Those and other concerns were already bringing multiple expressions of disappointment from critics Friday. But the public will have one more chance to offer feedback now that the draft proposal is out. Comments can be sent until Nov. 15, after which the text will be finalized.

The actual legislation will be tabled and enacted in the spring session of the legislature. Regulations to follow and if long-standing practice of this government is any guide, those will contain the devil-in-the-details part of the legislation.

After all that, the government says the new fees, licensing, reporting and protective regime for water “would be phased in over time.” Lest anybody thought this was a rush job.

Food giant Nestlé, which draws large amounts of water for free near Hope, would be one of the companies affected by proposed groundwater legislation announced Friday by Environment Minister Mary Polak. But Green MLA Andrew Weaver calculated the proposed fee schedule would only cost Nestlé 85 cents per 2 million bottles.

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